General Philosophies of Muscle Mass Gain

Because of the primary focus of my books and many of my article topics I tend to get tagged as the fat-loss guy more often than not; but nutrition and training for muscle gain is actually a primary interest of mine. Having worked with bodybuilders, powerlifters and other athletes over the years, figuring out how to put muscle mass on them (in terms of both training and nutrition) is obviously important.

In this article (which will actually form an introduction to a series of articles I’ll be doing over the next several weeks and months), I want to talk about some basic concepts related to mass gaining nutrition, primarily looking at some of the different philosophies of mass-gaining that are out there. As usually, I’ll look at each in my normal way, looking at the various pros and cons of each approach.

And, of course, I’ll give my own recommendations for what I think is actually optimal for most trainees under most circumstances. Please note my use of the word ‘most’ in that sentence; there are always exceptions, situations where I might do something different. Here I’m speaking more in generalities.

Old School Bulking/Cutting

In the olden days of bodybuilding, the standard approach to gaining muscle mass was to get big and fat in the off-season and this was called bulking. In modern terms this is generally referred to as GFH which stands for Get Fucking Huge

Both approaches revolve around the same concept: trainees train their balls off and eat as much as they can force down, gaining weight (and body fat) rapidly. In the old days, guys would then diet like maniacs and there are stories of guys bulking up to over 300 pounds before dropping to sub-200 pounds for their contest. Yes, insanity. Dieting is a little bit more sane now and it usually takes a good 6-12 months for the fat boys to get lean again.

I’d note that, to some degree, this idea still exists today among some professional bodybuilders. For example, here’s Lee Priest in the off-season and in competition condition.

Fat Boy Eating

Lookit Those Abs

There are also a good many stories of big strong powerlifters dieting down to seriously amazing bodybuilding levels of leanness and development. Dave Gulledge is a particularly good example, here’s pictures of him before leaning out and after.

Not Actually that Fat

Damn

So there’s clearly some merit to the ‘get big and strong and FAT’ approach to gaining muscle mass. When the trainee gets the fat off (which may take a year or more depending on the degree of fatness), assuming they don’t diet too badly and lose all the muscle, they often look absolutely amazing. It’s also a lot of fun to just eat and eat and eat and not care where the calories come from. Pizza, donuts, candy bars, whatever gets the calories down the pie-hole is good to go.

What isn’t usually talked about is the supporting ‘elements’ (read: drugs) that are involved here. Between increasing the amount of muscle mass gained while the folks in question get big and fat (and increasing the total amount of muscle that can be held) to sparing muscle loss while they diet off 150 pounds of lard, the drugs make a huge difference.

But the GFH approach to mass gain can backfire badly for naturals as there are biological limits to both the rate of muscle gain (per day or per week) as well as the maximum amount of muscle a natural lifter can carry. Simply, I don’t think this is generally ideal for the natural bodybuilder or athlete to gain muscle mass.

Athletes can’t usually afford to get that fat in the first place (performance suffers) and excess fat gain while gaining muscle mass for bodybuilders just means that much longer of a diet to get it back off. As mentioned above, and discussed below, given a maximum weekly rate of muscle gain, gaining weight at too fast a rate simply means that much more fat is being gained without increasing the rate of muscle mass gain.

Even for non-competitive bodybuilders, assuming the trainee is actually training for appearance reasons, getting excessively big and fat for part of the year really isn’t consistent with that goal. If you’re training for looks, ruining them by getting super fat just doesn’t make sense. That’s on top of other potential negatives of the GFH approach such as stretch marks and the potential to permanently increase the bodies set point (making it harder to get and stay lean when you diet back down).

I should note that, for very skinny folks or those looking for the most rapid rate of gain to reach their genetic limits, there is something to be said for the GFH philosophy. But, for most, I generally feel that the cons outweigh the pros and outside of a situation like a pro-football player or someone who just needed to get big and strong fast and didn’t care about the excess fat gain (or actually needed it to be competitive), I’d be unlikely to recommend this approach.

Lean Gaining

At the other extreme is the near obsession with lean-gaining, the idea being that folks are going to gain muscle mass without putting on an ounce of body-fat. Some supplements actually catered to this and the big fad in the 90’s were low-calorie mass gainers, products that claimed to magically put muscle on people without providing excess calories. And they did increase lean weight but only because they all contained creatine which increases lean body mass (via water retention) by several pounds. Thankfully, that fad has gone.

Lean gaining is usually based around insanely meticulous calorie and nutrient counting and timing, an obsession with clean eating, etc. without ever actually providing sufficient nutrients to grow at any meaningful rate. When you hear someone say that you can’t put on more than three pounds of muscle in a year, this is who you’re usually talking to: the guys who won’t allow even an ounce of fat gain. Or you’re talking to a natural bodybuilder who’s been at it for 10 years and is near his genetic limit. But it’s usually the lean-obsessed guys who aren’t gaining jack squat for muscle in a year.

The benefits of the lean-gaining approach, mind you, are that you get to look great year round; of course if your goal is contest bodybuilding (or sports), it also means literally no dieting time. If you model or make your living based on your physique, being able to do a photo shoot within a few weeks (or days) notice may be financially beneficial as well. This tends not to represent the majority of obsessives who try to use the lean-gaining approach.

The simple fact is that a bodybuilder who refuses to gain any fat and doesn’t put on any muscle between shows won’t be improving year to year. Unless they have perfect symmetry, size, shape, etc. their fear of body fat is preventing them from ever getting any better.

Athletes often have to add muscle mass (to improve strength, power or move up a weight class) and often don’t have very long to do it. Keeping calories too low year round hurts improvements in both mass and strength gains and even weight class athletes such as Olympic Lifters and Powerlifters usually train at a weight slightly higher than their weight class: this lets them eat more food, train more effectively and make faster gains; they can always drop weight and fat when needed.

The simple fact is that the body needs not only an appropriate training stimulus but also sufficient building blocks (protein, amino acids) AND sufficient dietary energy (calories) for maximal improvements. I discuss this in some detail in Calorie Partitioning Part 1 and Calorie Partitioning Part 2. Staying excessively lean (which means either doing tons of cardio, restricting calories, or both) isn’t consistent with the goal of trying to get stronger and more muscular for the most part.

Another drawback to the whole lean-gaining thing is that the meticulous attention to nutrition every day can drive people crazy. Of course, bodybuilders are usually a bit nutso anyhow and orthorexia is a very real eating-disorder. But worrying about every gram of everything that you eat every day of your life can drive some people insane (more insane); it also triggers some awesome binges when they lose control for even a second.

Before moving on, I would note that some lean gaining approaches, notably the mass variant of my own Ultimate Diet 2.0, as well as some of the intermittent fasting approaches (such as Martin Berkhan’s Lean Gains) take a more relaxed approach to the idea of gaining muscle mass while limiting fat gain. Rather than being based around keeping calories pretty low/controlled all the time, they are based around the short-term (1-3 days) alternation of low and high-calorie intakes.

The lowered calorie periods limit or reduce fat gains while the high-calorie periods support growth and gains. There’s more flexibility, trainees get some big-eating periods (helping to stave off insanity and binges) and there are other benefits of them for people who are determined to stay lean year round but want to actually gain some muscle mass. But these approaches are typically much different than the ‘typical’ approach to lean-gaining.

As well, for many they are simply not worth the time or energy investment and I want to describe what I feel is perhaps an ‘ideal’ approach to gaining mass (over the long-term) without either getting too fat or limiting gains by staying too lean.

Before getting to that, I need to discuss something that will not make a lot of readers happy.

How Fast Can You Actually Gain Muscle Mass?

We live in an instant gratification society and are constantly bombarded with amazing claims; while this is probably most true in the world of weight loss, it’s not much different when it comes to muscle gain.

Magazines advertise 20 pounds or rock hard muscle in a mere 8-10 weeks, a supplement promises 5 lbs of muscle in 3 days or whatever; all around we see claims of rapid gains in muscle mass. Sadly, this is all basically bullshit. Yeah, with glycogen loading or creatine you can increase lean body mass (not the same as muscle mass) fairly rapidly but beyond that, skeletal muscle actually grows fairly slowly.

How slowly?

On average, a natural male doing everything right will be doing very well to gain 1/2 of pound muscle per week. A female might gain half that or about 1/2 pound muscle every 2 weeks.

Let’s put that in perspective: over a full year of training, assuming the trainee is doing everything right, that’s 26 pounds of the good stuff for men (13 pounds for women). Which, if you think about it, actually isn’t that awful. It’s simply awful compared to what people think they are going to get based on the false promises in the magazines (or the claims of drug using bodybuilders).

That assumes that half-pound is gained week-in, week-out for the entire year. Oddly, and somewhat tangentially, it usually doesn’t work that way. Trainees may go a long time with no measurable gains and then wake up several pounds heavier seemingly overnight. I have no idea why, that’s just how it usually works.

I’d note that, under the right conditions (usually underweight high school kids), much faster rates of gain are often seen or reported. But these tend to be exceptions to the rule more than the norm and since I’m usually writing for the average male trainee who’s not 15 years old with raging hormones, I don’t consider those values very illustrative. And, occasionally, when the stars are right, and everything clicks, a true one pound per week of muscle mass gain may be seen for short periods. But again, that tends to be the exception.

Let me reiterate: the average male trainee is doing well to gain about 1/2 pound muscle per week, 2 pounds per month or about 24-26 pounds per year. I’d note that that will generally only happen in the first year of training and things slow down after that. A female may be gaining about half that much, 1 pound per month of actual muscle tissue or 10-12 pounds per year. I know it sucks but that’s reality.

I bring this up as it has some relevance to the weekly rate of weight gain that is acceptable for what I’m going to describe next.

A Happy Medium: Bulk a Little, Cut a Little

As many know, and altogether too many don’t know or realize, I’m usually a happy medium kind of guy. I find most extremist stances to be flawed and usually end up somewhere between the two in my recommendations; that’s on top of trying to look at the context of a given trainee’s situation. This is true for training, diet and most everything else you care to name. It’s certainly true for the topic of this article.

As noted above, there’s no doubt that gaining some fat will allow a faster rate of muscle gain. The drawback is that, gain too much fat and dieting time is extended and appearance suffers. And while staying lean is nice from an appearance standpoint, trying to stay too lean all the time tends to hurt mass and strength gains because the trainee simply can’t eat enough.

The solution of course is to simply alternate shorter periods of mass-gaining (let’s not use the term bulking since it seems to cause people so many mental problems) where the goal is maximal muscle gains while accepting small amounts of fat gain before dropping into a short dieting phase to strip off the fat without losing any of the muscle gain.

Please read the bold bits carefully, they are the key to all of this. What’s ideal for most situations in my experience is to try to maximize muscle gain (smart training, slight caloric surplus) by allowing a small amount of fat gain to occur. While this causes the trainee to get fatter (this should be done without getting outright FAT), this also maximizes the rate of muscle gain. While dieting, of course, the goal should always be to limit muscle mass losses (as outlined in pretty much any of my books). Done properly, alternating mass gain with proper dieting, the end result is more muscle mass.

This idea isn’t new mind you, and has probably been around for 30-40 years or more (McCallum wrote about it in The Keys to Progress and Dan Duchaine was an advocate of this approach). I simply happen to think it’s superior for most applications to either GFH or the ‘Gotta stay ripped year round crew’ for the average natural bodybuilder or athlete (or simply individuals interested in gaining muscle mass).

So let’s put some numbers and guidelines to this.

1. First and foremost, for reasons outlined in my article Initial Body Fat and Body Composition Changes, trainees should not be starting out their muscle gaining phase too fat. Males should be ~10-12% body fat before even considering going on any kind of ‘bulk’ (fatter trainees can usually gain some muscle while losing fat with a basic recomposition plan; this is beyond the scope of this article). For a female, this would be roughly equivalent to 19-24% body fat.

Bodybuilders with contest aspirations might even start out a little bit leaner, perhaps 8% for males and 17-20% for females; this is simply to facilitate getting into contest shape in less time. Any leaner than that and hormones and energy tend to suffer. And, yes, this means that many will have to diet first before they even consider putting on muscle. That’s life.

2. It would be ideal, if, after dieting, the trainee took two weeks at maintenance to stabilize at the new body fat level. The reasons for this are numerous but revolve around letting some of the hormonal adaptations to dieting normalize. I’ve written about this endlessly on the site and my full diet break concept is outlined in detail in both The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook and A Guide to Flexible Dieting. Briefly, take two weeks at roughly maintenance calories with at least 150 grams/day of carbohydrate.

3. Now you can start gaining weight. Assuming relative average partitioning (not superior or inferior), a weight gain of approximately one pound per week (of which half should be muscle) and half a pound per week for females (of which half should be muscle), or 4 and 2 pounds/month respectively should roughly maximize muscle gains without excessive fat gain. There will be some fat gain, of course, but, simply, any faster rate of weight gain (I’ve seen folks suggest 2-3 pounds per week) will only increase fat gain without increasing the rate of muscle mass gain.

4. When the trainee hits a body fat percentage of approximately 15% for men (24-27% for women), the mass gaining phase should end. How long this take will depend on the size of the person but realistically, a 170 pound male trainee with 10% body fat could gain 16 pounds (8 pounds fat, 8 pounds muscle) before hitting the 15% mark. At one pound per week, that’s 16 weeks of gaining. Which, I’d note should be broken up into at least two separate training blocks.

A female starting at 130 pounds and 19% body fat could realistically get to 154 pounds (12 pound fat/12 pounds lean) before hitting 24% body fat. For the female trainee, at one half-pound per week is nearly a year of training; again that would be broken up into distinct training phases.

5. After finishing the mass-gaining phase, a consolidation phase of two weeks (this used to be called a ‘hardening’ phase) where calories are brought back down to maintenance levels (and cardio, if not being done, is brought in) should occur before actively dieting.

Of course, the diet itself is a completely separate topic, some prefer to lose as slowly as they’ve gained, others are using the ideas in my Rapid Fat Loss Handbook to strip off the fat as rapidly as possible so that they can get back to gaining again. Both are valid and my article series on Fat Loss for Athletes is worth reading for more information.

Let me summarize the above a little more briefly: trainees should set a bottom and top-end for acceptable body fat levels. For males, 10-15% is a good range, for females 19-27% or so works. Diet down until you hit the low end, stabilize for two weeks, gain until you hit the high end, stabilize for two weeks, then diet back down while keeping the muscle. Over many months or a year of training, you should end up with more muscle than you started with which is the whole goal.

Comments

41 Responses to “General Philosophies of Muscle Mass Gain”

Rafi on
November 22nd, 2008 6:00 am

Great article as usual Lyle. Just thought I would point out that the webpage title appears to be wrong as “High-carbs or Low-carbs for Mass Gains” appears in the title bar. I asusme/hope that’s an indication of a future article…

Do you find that age of the trainer can make a difference to this? I’ll be 40 next year and I wonder if I could really get down to 10%-15% bodyfat naturally. I’ve never been a bodybuilder, just a weightlifter, and although I try to gain mass I have never had to worry about my bodyfat getting out of control. It’s only in recent years that I have started to look at weightloss information as I have noticed that some bodyfat is starting to creep in there.

I guess I just wondering if you 10%-15% target is geared towards a younger trainer under mid 30’s? I know a male in their 20’s wouldn’t have a problem at all achieving this.

Having said that, I think this concept would be perfect for me at this time in my life. In earlier years I probably have leaned a little towards the obsessive “lean gaining” crowd, but it’s too hard to keep that up forever. I’ll enjoy experimenting with this, regardless of what bodyfat level I maintain.

John on
November 23rd, 2008 11:19 am

This article says an average male trainee can gain about 24 pounds a year of LBM while a female may gain about half that. So the recommendation is for the male trainee to bulk by one pound a week while the female trainee should gain a half pound a week.

Somewhere else it’s said that the average male trainee, strictly natural, can gain 24 pounds of LBM in his first year of serious training, but next year he can expect at most half of that. So does that mean while in the first year he should bulk by one pound a week, in subsequent years he should bulk by a half pound a week?

“Let me reiterate: the average male trainee is doing well to gain about 1/2 pound muscle per week, 2 pounds per month or about 24-26 pounds per year. I’d note that that will generally only happen in the first year of training and things slow down after that. ”

So, yes, as folks get more advance, the rate of weight gain may have to slow to account for genrally slower rates of gain in muscle mass.

So far as the age thing, there are plenty of guys stepping on stage in contest shape who are older (Hell, I prepped a female at 44 to 7%) so it can be done. It does get more difficult but it can certainly be done.

And muscle gain rates are often slower as folks get older, just a consequence of hormones. So rate of weight gain may have to slow down.

Lyle

Matt on
November 23rd, 2008 10:18 pm

Lyle,

I’ve been reading your work for 5 years now and it never disappoints. I am truly indebted.

This might be an upcoming tangent, but if not maybe you could address it here:

the line between Lean Gaining and your happy medium, where a bulk is the 24 hours post-workout and a cut is the time until the next workout. Basically your PSMF + 3 weekly refeeds after workouts. This is close to how I am eating now, but my cutting phase is more of a high-protein flexible diet. According to p-ratios and 24-36 hour protein synthesis levels it seems ideal to me.

Perhaps this is just a simplified UD2.0, but I have found it very appealing psychologically due to its simplicity. I basically eat 200-300g extra carbs after my workouts. Other than that, what I eat day in and day out is pretty much the same.

Can you discuss the physiological advantages/disadvantages to that approach?

“…the potential to permanently increase the bodies set point (making it harder to get and stay lean when you diet back down).”

I have never heard this before. I would like more info about this. I wonder if my husband is at this “set point”. We eat very healthy and work out 4 times a week – 2 advanced step/interval aerobics class days and 2 weight training days. Still, he is not loosing any weight! We’ve been at this for 2 years. He’s 220 and not budging. He’s a classic mesomorph and needs to only look at weights to put on muscle.

as folks get more well trained, muscle gains slow down. First year, you might see 20-25 lbs in a male trainee doing it right. Second year perhaps half that (10-12 pound more). Third year, half again (5-6 pounds). At that point (about 40 lbs lean body mass gained), you’re near your genetic limits and you’ll be fighting to significant amounts much past that.

Lyle

Anthony on
December 31st, 2008 10:49 pm

Lyle,

In your article, you say, “with glycogen loading or creatine you can increase lean body mass (not the same as muscle mass) fairly rapidly but beyond that, skeletal muscle actually grows fairly slowly.” I’m trying to align your definitions with the following information from an online article by John Berardi: “a 200 pound male with 15% body fat has 170 pounds of total lean body mass. About half of that (85 pounds) is muscle mass, and about 80% of that (68 pounds) is water, leaving 17 pounds of muscle protein.” For example, you say, in your post of December 5th, 2008 7:26 pm, “First year, you might see 20-25 lbs in a male trainee doing it right. Second year perhaps half that (10-12 pound more). Third year, half again (5-6 pounds).” I assume you are using the term “muscle mass” the same way Berardi uses it. These gains include water retained in the muscle cells. I say that because, if you use “muscle mass” to mean actual skeletal muscle tissue (what Berardi refers to as “muscle protein”), that would suggest that the person gaining 20-25 lbs of muscle tissue was gaining 100-125 lbs of muscle mass, which can’t be right. If you could clarify, I would appreciate it. I find your articles worth reading.

When I say ‘gain 1 lb of muscle’ that means 1 lb actual lean body mass. That includes roughly 100-120 grams of actual contractile protein, water, glycogen, etc. that all goes into that one pound of muscle. Make sense? A one pound gain of visible muscle mass contains 100-120 grams of actual protein and everything else contributing to that pound.

What I’m NOT saying is that you’re gaining an actual one pound (454 grams) of contractile tissue. That would represent about 4 pounds of actual muscle gained (454 / 120 = ~4). Because 4 pounds of actual muscle would contain about that many grams of contractile protein.

As well, my comment about muscle mass not being the same as lean body mass was more referring to the fact that lean body mass includes things like water, bone, organs, glycogen and a lot of stuff that isn’t actual contractile tissue.

Hope that makes sense
Lyle

Dan Moore on
February 1st, 2009 1:56 pm

I’m glad you spelled out that last point as many confuse this issue, contractile protein accrual vs. whole mixed muscle accrual

Visaria on
August 30th, 2009 6:52 am

The possible gain of 24-26 pounds of LBM (0.5 a week x 52) doesn’t take into account the periods of time spent during the year dieting off the accumulated fat. I would presume that you wouldn’t be gaining muscle during these periods these periods (perhaps a quarter of the year???) . Hence the amount of possible muscle gained would be somewhat lower than the 24-26 lbs quoted.

Matt on
November 15th, 2009 4:05 pm

What do you mean when you say should be broken up into at least two separate training blocks? for the 16 weeks of gaining? I think i have an idea of periodization of maybe strength vs hypertrophy or something along the lines, but just wondering if you could direct me to an article which you specify this during an offseason/muscle building phase. Gracias.

In the context of the comment above, what I mean is that you wouldn’t try to do one straight 16 week cycle of training where you try to push up poundages and work yourself to death the entire time. Rather, it’d be better broken into

Rather than the typical gym rat approach of ‘try to bust my nuts for 16 weeks straight and get burnt out and injured’. Bodybuilders, for the most part haven’t really embraced any sort of periodization schemes (there are a handfulf of exceptions), at some point in the near future I’ll write something more detailed about this.

Jack on
November 26th, 2009 9:19 pm

I understand the importance of 2 weeks of maintenance CALORIES after dieting, but does this mean you cannot or should not enter the beginning stages of a gaining PROGRAM (which usually start off with submaximal loads anyway), so that way you get the best of both worlds….you still are able to normalize hormones with 2 weeks at maintenance calories, but you are timing it perfectly so that by the time you starting hitting new PRs, you begin your surplus since you wont be gaining much anyway during the 2 week submaximal period…

How about not doing little bulk and diet phases, but just running at some reasonable male appearance level (10%) and just allowing weight to creep up say a pound a month (would be 12 pounds in a year). Maybe watching bf% and waist size and adjusting after a few months if there is evidence that muscle gain is slower/faster than expected. (And strength gains allow some proxy to show muscle gain, no)?

Charles on
April 2nd, 2010 6:43 pm

Wow, awesome article! I have actually been doing the 2 week breaks @ maintenance during my diet and it helps a ton, especially mentally but it also makes sense that it helps level out hormones and such. (This wasnt the focus of the article but still)

After my fat loss (I started at 20%+ in January, trying to get down to 8%, I have gone from 205->178 to date I will definitely continue the times at maintenance.

Also I like the idea of the bulking to a certain BF level and staying on that range, seems to make psychological sense

Can you go into the science behind this statement: “Yeah, with glycogen loading or creatine you can increase lean body mass (not the same as muscle mass) fairly rapidly but beyond that, skeletal muscle actually grows fairly slowly.”

I don’t really understand the difference between increasing lean body mass and skeletal muscle. I know there is a difference and I know people can seem to gain 30 pounds of muscle in less that a year. I also know that you are saying that they are increasing lean body mass and not actual mass and if that’s the case then how can you distiguish between which has been gained?

I’ve come to the same conclusion in my training and practice. “Lean gains” are too slow and bulked up is not what most people want to end up looking like.

My only suggestion would be to alternate more often between muscle gain and fat loss. You mention a 16-week training cycle for men. That seems like a long cycle to me. In my experience, switching the focus more often produces more gains, since the body doesn’t get adapted.

Even if you vary your hypertrophy-style training, after a few weeks, it seems your body gets tired of trying to put on mass.

What I do is change the focus every 6 weeks.

Thanks for your tips,

Carl

Matt O on
October 5th, 2010 8:34 pm

Lyle,

Would you recommend something similar for endurance sports, eg. cycling? I ask because I’m not certain but I believe that mitochondrial density is more important than total muscle, and I wonder how this would respond to something like a calorie deficit/surplus.

it seems that 3 weeks of a 40% caloric deficit didn’t hurt the post-dieting performance of competitive cyclists.

Ryan on
December 1st, 2010 3:08 pm

Hi there,

Please could you elaborate a bit more why a consolidation (“hardening phase”) is required after a mass gain phase?

I can understand that a maintenance phase after dieting will help to prevent rapid fat gains caused by elevated hormones. But wouldn’t slightly elevated “fat burning hormones” help to rapidly reduce body fat after a long mass gain phase?

All the best,
Ryan

Matt on
January 25th, 2011 5:12 pm

hey Lyle,

so in the beginning of the article, you mentioned that unless you are some 15 year old underweight teen, then you can only put on a half pound of muscle per week.

i just so happen to be 114lbs and 15 years old 5’7″. How much muscle can i realistically put on per week?

best wishes

Dan on
February 9th, 2011 12:11 am

I feel depressed to read that you can only gain one pound of muscle per week. I’m currently bulking and thought two pounds per week was a reasonable goal. Im 22, 6’1” and started out at 175lbs. After two weeks I’m now at 180 and don’t think I put on any fat. My goal is 200 lbs with below 10% body fat, I’m currently at 11%. But if half the weight I’m gaining is not muscle, then when I get to 200 in 10 weeks I’ll have an extra ten pounds of fat, which will put me at 15% body fat… guess I have to slow down and take a solid five months to get to 200lbs. When I first started weight training in high school, I went from 150 to 175 in three months, without gaining fat, but I guess that was the early results phase.

Great article man. We know that it’s possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time by following the right kind of diet, training heavy, using the right supplements, and sleeping enough every night. Some people might choose that route because it keeps them stable year-round. I personally prefer a moderately lean bulk followed by a slow diet phase designed to keep the new muscle. It has worked really well for me and my clients over the years.

linda on
November 29th, 2011 3:10 pm

I am a 40 year old, mom of 3 kids – figure competitor, headed to nationals after reviewing pictures from last show clearly I need to add muscle, development of legs more and some size upper body. I love reading your article which makes perfect sense. Nationals will be July so I have 8 months to build, define and then lean out nice for presentation. wondering if the build/diet build would be the most efficient.

Nelson on
April 16th, 2012 6:56 pm

So lets say I am on a 250 caloric surplus and gain about 2 pounds per month. I can bulk longer about a year and a half I wouldn’t have to do those mini cuts am i correct please explain.

Good article , however I think that bulking up too quickly puts too much pressure on joints and tendons (because of incerasing the weight used) and digestive system (excessive amounts of food eaten).

Hugo on
July 3rd, 2014 3:00 pm

Lyle,

so you told that the best is to bulk to 15%, cut to 10%, bulk to 15%, cut to 10% etc etc.

But witch diet is the best for bulking? (for gain most as possible muscle mass?)
the bulking routine? or the ud2 mass variation?
or maybe the A Guide to Flexible Dieting style? (i dont read this book yet)

what are your opinion about which diet is best for bulking?
bulking routine? or ud2 mass?

David

Greg on
October 21st, 2014 4:13 am

Any citations for female muscle gain numbers? 1/2lbs every two weeks?
Also if someone is an overweight female, novice and on calorie deficit, will the stored fat help in building muscle, or is the muscle building rate non existent due to calorie deficit?